Finally Upgraded to Windows 10

[Det.Bullock]

And finally I upgraded to windows 10 because the next Star Wars spacesim requires it.
It was relatively painless, even my main worry, the HOTAS software CH Control manager, still works as it should.
Of course it did somehow decide that the AMD HD audio device was to be the default instead of the on board audio for some reason and had to reinstall X-wing vs Tie Fighter from gog as my old installation was made before win10 even existed.
And of course I had to convince the OS to use media player classic again instead of whatever is the new windows default player called.
Fortunately it accepted my old windows 7 license without issues so I didn’t need to buy one.
Any official microsoft resource is remarkably unhelpful however, most of the times it got me to a page where I could buy a new PC no matter what I did and had to realy for the most part on google for any info.

[Vheissu]

Good call on WMP Classic. The new media player is kinda odd, it feels as though MS intended to provide a bunch more functionality to it a la streaming services but they never really followed through.

[Sarfrin]

And of course I had to convince the OS to use media player classic again instead of whatever is the new windows default player called.

I prefer VLC to either.

[Det.Bullock]

Good call on WMP Classic. The new media player is kinda odd, it feels as though MS intended to provide a bunch more functionality to it a la streaming services but they never really followed through.

There are a lot of hints that the system almost doesn’t consider normal desktop PC functionality both in the OS installation options and the microsoft support pages. In an odd bout of anthropomorphization I started to think it felt insulted I was installing it on a lowly windows 7 desktop from 2012 rather than a modern laptop, preferably with touch screen capabilities.
It’s almost “don’t you guys have phones?” level crap and it was pretty surreal seeing it in the product itself, not just the marketing (which was already frustrating when I didn’t know I could try my luck with my win7 license yet and tried to get one from microsoft to avoid buying one from dodgy third party sellers).

And of course I had to convince the OS to use media player classic again instead of whatever is the new windows default player called.

I prefer VLC to either.

It’s what came with the X codec pack before VLC was a widely known thing. Personally I’m fine with it.

[BillButNotBen]

In general I’m really liking Win10, though I’m not totally sure how much of the improvement simply came from the new laptop and move to SSD.

The move to being a more mobile-style platform is mostly good, in that it seems to mean more polish and usability in most areas.
The one thing that I don’t like is the way it handles updates. On the one hand, platform-as-a-service means it often evolves nicely and ads small new features and tweaks, but on the other hand every big update seems like a total gamble in terms of whether it’s going to bork something.

Out of interest, does anyone ever use the windows 10 Timeline?
It sounds like a great feature, and I’ve never worked out how to use it or when I would actually want to use it or how it actually works.

[alms]

I use both VLC and MPC-HC, however my go-to is the latter.

There are some use cases where VLC proves useful but MPC-HC is a more enjoyable minute-to-minute experience for me.

Also VLC’s UI seems to have designed by Cthulhu cultists in the 1920s.

In general I’m really liking Win10, though I’m not totally sure how much of the improvement simply came from the new laptop and move to SSD.

You could go back to a Windows 7 or 8 machine from time to time like I did, and then you’d probably come to the same conclusion, that obviously better hardware makes everything better but also Windows 10 has gone through a lot of refinement, in the UX department, too, and the old OS feel positively aged by this time.

Not that it should come as a surprise, since both 7 and 8 are ancient by tech standards and Microsoft has been pouring a lot of effort in making WIndows 10 feel fresh and snappy.

Out of interest, does anyone ever use the windows 10 Timeline?

I don’t use any W10 feature that requires a Microsoft account.

[Det.Bullock]

I did the windows updates manually but that meant that it downloaded generic AMD drivers because I still had the windows 7 ones installed.
So I had to download the new drivers and I did a clean install.
I also noticed that the USB 3.0 ports on the front panel now work properly, before they only had USB 2.0 functionality for some reason but I never bothered too much because I just needed the additional ports and didn’t want to potentially mess with the bios.

[Sarfrin]

MPC-HC

I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll check it out. VLC does have some quirks.

[Det.Bullock]

MPC-HC

I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll check it out. VLC does have some quirks.

It’s Media Player Classic HC, which is also the one I happen to use though I usually forget it’s actually the HC version instead of the old Media Player Classic.

It came in the X codec pack, that used vanilla Media Player Classic back when it was called XP Codec Pack:
https://www.xcodecpack.com/
It’s basically a bundle of codecs and instruments to tweak some codecs already present in most PCs, it’s been particularly useful with a couple of old windows games with FMV issues, I remember in particular being able to raise the volume of the Wing Commander 4 FMVs thanks to this because it defaults to “barely audible” and cannot be tweaked in-game.

[Det.Bullock]

Another funny thing I noticed is that some audio issues I had been having for about a year with dosbox on win7 seem to have disappeared after the upgrade.
X-wing and Tie Fighter sound and music had started to crackle and skip like crazy for some reason and nothing I could do corrected the issue unless it slowed down the emulation to a crawl, just made the sound lag behind the game or slowed down the music.
After the upgrade everything is back to normal for some reason, it’s possible windows did download an upgraded driver not available for win7 that solved the problem since the thing does a lot of things without telling the user but could it be an unresolved bug brought by one of win7’s last upgrades?

I also noticed that you can have windows block startup apps without needing to mess with the registry, so I can get it to not start a few processes I have no use since my old iPod broke (yes, I’m keeping iTunes only because I have my ripped cds neatly filed by author and album there, I’m a creature of habit, ok?).